Superficial People Have A Tougher Time With Loneliness

Trending News: The Secret To Avoiding Loneliness

Why Is This Important?

Because loneliness is a downward spiral.

Long Story Short

Researchers have discovered that people who are more true to themselves are less likely to feel the negative effects of loneliness. Even when reporting feelings of loneliness, "authentic" people were less likely to report physical symptoms or drinking problems.

Long Story

As social animals, there's nothing worse than feeling utterly alone in the world. Of course it's fine and necessary to have some privacy and solitude (often, for some people), but the idea that there's no one to reach out to is a crippling one. In an attempt to more easily pull others into our inner circles, some people will go out of their way to try new things, connect with people they don't like and generally be someone they're not. This, according to a new study, is a terrible idea. In fact, they find that being true to yourself may be the best defense against loneliness.

Researchers from the University of Houston surveyed 537 undergraduate students (median age 22) and asked them about how lonely they felt, their mood, any recent physical symptoms and their alcohol consumption. They also attempted to measure their "authenticity" across four areas: "Awareness," "Behavior," "Related Orientations" (honesty in relationships) and "Unbiased Processing." Their scores were compiled and normalized to create an overall authenticity score.

Not surprisingly, loneliness was associated with negative moods, unpleasant physical symptoms and higher alcohol use. However, authenticity appeared to be a mitigating factor: Even when respondents with higher authenticity reported high feelings of loneliness, they weren't nearly as prone to the negative associations as people who were less authentic. In other words, being authentic doesn't prevent loneliness, but being superficial can make loneliness feel worse.

The researchers suspect that more authentic people don't take loneliness as personally as people with less-established personalities. After all, the whole point of putting on affectations is to curry favor with others, so if those people are lonely it can feel like a personal failure. More authentic people, on the other hand, are more likely to see loneliness as an inconvenience to be overcome. In the same vein, authentic people feel less compelled to step out of their comfort zones as a last-ditch effort to "cure" their loneliness, which for most people is an ultimately stressful and frustrating endeavor.

In other words, if you can learn to enjoy spending time with numero uno, you're a lot less likely to suffer from #FOMO.

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I'm never lonely because I'm the most interesting person I know!

Drop This Fact

Prolonged loneliness can be life threatening, affecting sleep, stress hormones and even blood pressure.